Friends Only(ish)

Hey All, this post is set in the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuture, when we all wear shiny suits and drive flying cars. So it will appear at the top o' my LJ.

This blog is not strictly speaking friends only, I do post a lot of public posts. But roughly 40% of the entries are friends-only - and they tend to be the juicy ones, about my relationship(s) (or lack thereof), work, etc. etc.

So, this blog may look a little anaemic if you're not a member of livejournal and a friend o' mine. You don't even have to post entries, just comment on this post, I'll add ya as a friend, then you can enjoy my LJ in all it's "glory".

[EDIT]
There's some more info about this on the LJ FAQ. You could also find this entry useful.

The Ten Worst Things About the Bush Administration. I'm amazed they managed to pare it down to ten...

Worst. President. Ever.

Very regular readers (there may be some of you) will remember that a couple of years ago a friend of mine - Daniel McKay - was killed in a car crash. Near his home town of Wallan, which is north-west of Melbourne on the way to Ballarat. This is the entry I wrote about it at the time, and another entry about some of his stencils.

It was, in fact, just over two years ago now. June 23rd of 2006. I remember my (then) girlfriend telling me on the the phone that she'd got a "bad" email. I asked what she meant by a "bad" email? Turned out Daniels dad had sent out an email from his email address saying "Daniel was in an accident last night and you won't be hearing from him again..."

Three of us made our way up to his funeral, which looked like it was attended by most of the town.

Then last year, around this time, I went on a pilgrimage up to Wallan. It seemed like the thing to do. I was pleased to see that several other people had been past as well, and left tokens by his grave. He's buried in one corner of the rather picturesque Wallan cometary. Which was also, I noticed, rather too full of young people.

I remember last year telling someone about my trip up there, and saying how Daniel was "Still there".

So, last weekend, it being just over two years, I drove north again, visited him again. It's sad to think that I will never see him again.

I'm not sure why Daniel's death in particular affected me. He's by no means the only friend I've lost. Actually, that's not entirely true, I'm lucky enough to have not really lost anyone like that - there was Hendric Bos, someone I knew in highshool, not well, who died in a hang glider accident the year after school finished. And my cousin Steven, who jumped of a building in the 80's. Actually, I could go on, but it's too miserable to do so. Suffice to say, that I've never been in this situation before. It's also that Daniel was such an interesting guy and... So young. He was only 21 when he died.

Anyway, I feel like he's berating me sometimes, from where he lies, to, I don't know, go stencil some walls or something.

( Pictures )

OK, so, I was hanging out on a fairly murky river, with lots of overhanging trees. And I had this floating arm chair. And there were all these ducks, who were my friends. And they were laying eggs and trying to raise baby ducks. And I had some eggs of my own which I was trying to, er, do the right thing by.

Anyway, at one stage one of the ducks comes over to me all quacky. So I hope in my armchair and paddle across the river, following it. There's a series of small caves on the rivers edge, one of which has a rope hanging out of it. A German Shepard, who was also a friend of me and the ducks, was tugging on the rope, and eventually pulled from the cave a huge eel (hmmmm, that's all sounding a bit Freudian isn't it?) A lot of these eels had been bothering the ducks, so it was good to catch one...

Possibly part of the same dream... I was in a basement with lots of lockers in it. I think it was in the building I work in. I was sitting around in my tiger pyjamas (don't ask) and I couldn't do any work because somehow my computer had been locked away in a cupboard somewhere. Then I ended up trying to explain all the connections between the people in my book group on the back of a piece of paper with diagram drawn in pen... To some people, can't remember whom...

And now for a dream I had a few days ago:

I was planning some kind of attack on a defence research facility, although it was all a bit half arsed. We had some shitty gun powder, and we'd build a tiny "shelter" which was three small walls of unmortared bricks and no roof... Eventually I was hanging out the front of the place, leaning on the hood of a very well maintained 80's vintage Commodore (you know how dreams are filled with these random details) until its owner came and drove it away.

Somehow I managed to talk my way into the place, but ended up drinking tea with a lot of the staff in the tea room. Which was partly constructed from parts of an old missile. Which it turned out they were about to test a later version of. The missile was huge, three stories high (ok, so, there might be something Freudian going on here too!) and was intended to attack ships. They launched one from one of the car parks, and it flew off to, er, I have no idea, think I woke up at that point.

Stupid brain, be less surreal!!!!

Pinched this meme from krystle_ab

Make one yourself!

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For reasons which are obscure, the ABC would like you to help it name its new pianos. Hey, I don't explain these things, I just find them...

For five days last week, I more or less lived in ACMI Cinema 2 during the Melbourne International Animation Festival.

This is at least the fourth year running that I've gone to as many sessions of this thing as I physically can. It actually started on Monday, but I didn't start going till Wednesday. My schedule was roughly:

Wednesday: two sessions
Thursday: three sessions
Friday: two sessions
Saturday: five sessions
Sunday: four sessions

For a total of sixteen. They averaged somewhat more than an hour each, in fact closer to an hour and half, so that's, what, about 22 total hours in the cinema in the space of a week. I also did loads of bike riding and staying up late on Friday and Saturday. Then on Sunday I came down with a cold. Funny that!

The last sessions every year are the "best of the festival", which includes some of the best films, and a "winner of the festival" film, plus the best Australian film. This year, on the Thursday, I saw a film in the Puppet Panorama, which I knew straight away was going to win the festival. It was called Madame Tutli-Putli, and really defies description. And I was right, it won!

The Canadian Film Board run an amusing online contest with the film - for every unique visitor who watched the film, they'd ad one more frame to the length shown online. Since several hundred people have now done so, you can watch the whole film. And try and work out for yourself what the heck it is about... I have to say, it's the best, smoothest, marionette/puppet animation I've ever seen. The solved one of the puppet animators major problems - how to do eyes - by the (seemingly) simple method of editing in real eyes onto the puppets. Gave the whole thing a really uncanny look.

The best Australian film was a really clever computer animation called The Passenger which is the charming story of a fish on a bus...! Man, read the blog, the dude spent eight years making a seven minute film. Even "Eraserhead" took less time!

I can really only measure how many festivals I've been to (almost) in their entirety by remembering the winning films from each year. In 2007 it was a hand-painted master piece called My Love. In 2006 it was, as I mentioned in a previous post, Jona/Tomberry. 2005 must have been the brilliant animated and very touching Ryan. The year before that, 2004, I can't remember, which probably means I wasn't at that festival for much of it.

Next year I should demand to be a judge :-)

Actually, next year I'll probably be overseas when the festival is on.

One of the hazards of seeing so many session is one tends to see the same film two or more times. This year I saw "The Passenger" three times. In 2006 I say "Jona/Tomberry" four times in three days (or it might even have been two days) which twisted my brain far more than it was already!

Come with me on a trip to Lego's secret vault!

I've got a cold. Couldn't have anything to do with doing fuck loads of bike riding on Friday and Saturday, staying up late sitting around two separate bonfires, and spending about sixteen hours in the cinema on Saturday and Sunday, could it? :-)

Actually, my whole office has been sick, not to mention mah GF and her entire (shared) household.

And that's about all I had to say about it. Being sick is boring, except for getting to sit around all day in your pyjamas :-)

Damn. Just found out, almost by accident, that George Carlin died a couple of days ago. Bugger. I was hoping to see him on my trip to the US next year... Dude was "only" 71.

I only got into him last year when I stumbled upon some of his work in youtube (I think). I quickly realised I heard his stuff on the radio in the past, and indeed some of it sampled in various songs. His sketch suggesting that the bet place to build houses for the homeless on Americas golf courses I'd heard somewhere. And an obscure band from here in Melbourne ("Incline" for those interested) sampled his line "the planet is fine, but people are fucked!"

George was famous for his "seven words you can't say on television" routine. Interestingly, the list of words actually changed over the years.

The Comedy Channel has a LOT of Video Tributes to him.

He reminded me a lot of Bill Hicks, who I am also a fan of. Hicks really only produced three or four albums, George had been recording since the early sixties! On one of his albums he talks about celebrating fifty years in show business. That's impressive.

"You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class, keep them showing up at those jobs!" - George Carlin

I've done more riding today than I've done since I got my bike! In fact, possibly more than I've ever done in one day.

This morning I rode to work - Northcote via East Melbourne, the top of the MCG and then St. Kilda Road to my office in the St. Kilda Road/Queens Road area.

Then after work I rode to ACMI for more Animation festival.

Then I rode in the rain (something I do reluctantly because as soon as I get rain on my glasses I can barely see) from ACMI, down past the front of the casino, behind the exhibition building, onto Williamstown Road, then Todd Road, into the park under the Westgate bridge. Then I rode around the park for a bit till I found the mass of cyclists I was looking for, and their very welcome bonfire.

On this particular segment I was that close to giving up and turning back home. I was negotiating some construction under Kings Way, in the rain, and almost went "fuck this, this is miserable, I can't see!", and then riding to Southern Cross and putting my bike on the train. But I persisted. It's possible the thought of seeing Deb kept me going :-)

And finally, I rode from the Westgate, up Lorimer street, through the Docklands, onto La Trobe Street, through the Flagstaff Gardens, onto Royal Parade past the Victoria Market, then onto Park Street and then the bike path that runs Brunswick-Northcote. Under Rushall station then on to my place. This last segment taking me the better part of an hour and twenty minutes. I estimate I've been on my bike for almost three hours today.

My arse is sore!

And my right hand is quite tired. My thumb gets tired from all the gear changing, in fact just as I was getting home, it stopped working altogether! Ah well, I'm home now and getting a bit dryer...

Ever had one of those nights were you watch three hours of animation, then ride your bike in the rain through Fisherman's Bend to a party with a bonfire under the westgate bridge, and then you end up eating brie with some randoms and talking about Jackson Pollack? I've had one of those nights...

Rocknerd is back.

Starting Wednesday evening, I will more or less be living at ACMI. The Melbourne International Animation Festival is on again, as as I have done for the last three or four years, I will be at almost every session! Well, not quite, but at least two or three sessions at day from Wednesday to Friday, most of Saturday and about six hours of Sunday! So, don't expect to see me for most of the next week.

And when you do, I'll probably think I'm a weasel and expect to be able to crawl up the walls.

A couple of years ago, the winning movie was the rather awesome Jona/Tomberry Please don't ask me to explain the title or I'll cry. And that streaming rendition of it leaves a lot to be desired... By a mad Dutchman called Rosto. Now I find myself needing to order it from the internets...!

I was cleaning my desk. I found claws attacking me from inside it:


My bachelor cat and my GF get some shut-eye:


(Click on them images for bigger versions.)

I spent a goodly proportion of the long weekend... cleaning my flat. Which will give you some idea how filthy it was. Mind you, I haven't entirely finished... I concentrated on a couple of specific areas, such as taking everything off my desk and putting it back. That's more work than in might sound, since there were six computers on it! Now there is only three, plus a LAN drive backup thingy. And two monitors. And a cat. Wait...

I've started a pile of stuff I'm going to get rid of. So far it's got one PC, an MP3 player, a large ethernet switch and an ancient Kodak camera. Some of this stuff is going on Ebay, if that fails, it's going on freecycle :-)

Unless any of you folks want it.

Damn. Why do I have a dead Benq laptop lying around my flat? Anyone want it????

This looks like it took a lot of work:

Here's a detailed list of the YouTube videos used.

Hey all, very tired, so grammar is likely to fail me. But I feel an urge to Blog.

Monday night I gave a speech at my Toastmasters club. A little about the Toastmasters program: one is given a manual which has ten projects (speeches in fact) in it. The first one is a easy one, then it goes from there. Anyway, once you've done ten speeches, you are considered no longer a novice, and Toastmasters International sends ya a certificate. The speech I gave on Monday was my tenth speech, so I am now officially a "Competent Communicator". Damn, I don't think much of that title, but all the same, it's nice to have achieved it. Only took me since August of 2003 :-)

And today, I sent off my enrolment form to the Chifley Business School. I'm enrolling in their MBA (Technology Management) course. Eep. I'm going back to being a student almost exactly ten years after I finished my degree at RMIT...

Which I had to provide a certified copy of. Which meant I had to find the damn thing! It was on a shelf, I suppose I should get the damn thing framed or something eventually.

There's also a good chance that work will fund some or all of my fees for the course! How cool is that! Might even get some study leave. Ace. Now I just have to make sure I'm not as shite a student as I was doing my undergrad degree...

OK, so, I'm about two years and four millions views late on this meme...

Oh, he has a friend: